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Championship weekend preview: Gary Rowett relishing Stoke bow

By Dan Long

Stoke boss Gary Rowett says his side 'must defend better and move as a unit' as they host Brentford in the Sky Bet Championship on Saturday afternoon.

Rowett - who spent more than £30m in this summer's transfer window - watched on as the Potters suffered a 3-1 defeat to Leeds at Elland Road on the Championship opening weekend.

This weekend's opponents, Brentford, meanwhile, enjoyed a fruitful start to their fifth successive second-tier campaign, with Neal Maupay scoring twice in a 5-1 home demolition of newly-promoted Rotherham.

Rowett, who has previous Championship experience after managing Birmingham and Derby, believes that lessons have been learned ahead of his home debut, a game he is "really looking forward to".

"We all knew that the first game at Leeds would be incredibly tough," he said. "We also knew that some of our players hadn't had that much pre-season or played at this level before.

"We are looking forward to getting out on our own pitch, in front of our own supporters for the first time this season - all of the players and staff, myself included, feel ready and are really looking forward to it. The players have all been incredibly bright this week and they have shown me that they are determined to atone for last weekend and produce a far better performance - hopefully a winning one.

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Brentford 5-1 Rotherham

Brentford 5-1 Rotherham

"We simply have to defend better than we did on Sunday, we have to move as a unit better and we have to be compact, in the way that we move aggressively across the pitch."

Boss Paul Cook said on wigantoday.net: "We want to go and apply ourselves properly. We don't want to sit back and say what a lovely stadium Villa Park is. As delighted as we are to be there, we want people to leave the stadium and say 'that was a good match'."